Serious police failures have been identified at the inquest into the death of former soldier Sean Fitzgerald.

Sean was aged 31 when he was shot in the chest by a police firearms officer at a property in Coventry in January 2019. Sean was not armed and no firearms were recovered from the property.

Armed West Midlands police officers had attended the property in execution of a search warrant instigated by West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit. There was no intelligence suggesting Sean Fitzgerald would be there.

On 21st May this year, after hearing six weeks of evidence, a jury concluded that Sean was killed lawfully. However, the jury also identified some serious causative failures in the planning and implementation of the police operation.

Sean Fitzgerald’s brother Liam Fitzgerald was represented at the inquest by Helen Stone of Hickman & Rose who instructed barristers Adam Straw KC, Tom Stoate and Tayyiba Bajwa of Doughty Street Chambers, which has published a blog post summarising the key facts of the case.

Among the police failures identified by the inquest jury were:

• A failure by some armed officers to have announced their presence prior to starting to force their way into the property through the front door;
• Failures by two armed officers, including the officer who shot Sean, to have announced “armed police” at the rear of the property when they noticed a curtain move; and to have turned their torches on at the rear of the property once officers began to chainsaw the front door.

Prior to the inquest, in December 2023, the IOPC concluded there was sufficient evidence to indicate that the officer who fired the fatal shot may have breached police professional standards regarding his use of force and therefore had a case to answer for gross misconduct.

At that time, West Midlands Police were directed to hold a misconduct hearing. However, it was agreed that the misconduct hearing should not progress until after the inquest proceedings; a fact that was only publicly announced following the inquest’s conclusion, when the IOPC also announced that it would “carefully review, as soon as possible, whether any of the additional evidence heard at the inquest impacts on our previous decision making”.